It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!

TWICE – Moonlight Sunrise

Depressingly generic crap with completely botched vocal meter that has the girls doing all sorts of awkward stuttering, they would have been better off leaving this one in Korean and throwing out an English-language version of “Fancy” or “Talk That Talk” if they wanted the western market that badly. JYP really needs to sharpen up his songwriters and tell them to get their hands off their o’clocks right now.

Cignature – Aurora

If Twice’s song this week wasn’t a completely botched disaster and was just generic and bland instead it might have been almost as good as this fairly dull and unexciting Cignature song.

TRI.BE – Witch

Okay, TRI.BE are trying to compensate for ending up on my shit-list last year and I appreciate the effort, this is pretty good. Sure it’s a little slow and maudlin but it suits the tone they’re going for and doesn’t do anything underwear-rippingly shameful which is enough to get it over the line. Good work, keep it up.

LIGHTSUM – Bye Bye Love

Just an obvious B-track, nothing to see here.

Primrose – Comely

I really like the syncopation they’ve got going on with the keyboard riff but it doesn’t quite work with the vocal meter they’ve chosen and it all sounds a bit messy as a result. This is one of those songs that sounds way better in the parts where the girls aren’t singing.

Jay Park, Slom feat. feat. Blase, 365LIT, JUPITER, KHAN, XINSAYNE, Roh Yun Ha, sokodomo, KOALA, Jambino, Lee Youngji, Chillin Homie, NSW yoon – Blue Check Remix

I’m not sure if you have the patience to listen to this many rappers but I sure don’t. Clyde please give them all their verified status already so they shut up about it.

Taeyong – Fine

When NCT’s Taeyong was announced there were tons of bullying controversies and people couldn’t believe he was going to be in the group, but I guess he is and now we all get bullied with shit ballads instead.

WayV – Broken Love

Sorry that I didn’t post any other posts this week but I was busy writing my novel where a k-pop girl bursts onto the set of a boy group ballad MV and just starts hacking people to death for sucking at music… oh wait, that’s the sequel. Shit, I just spoilered it, I’m going to have to change the plot to something else now.

WayV – Diamonds Only

This just sounds like everything. Hang on, didn’t I already review this? Who can even fucking remember, it’s so generic.

Jinyoung – Cotton Candy

It’s not amazing but it’s probably the best k-pop song featuring a video with someone in a Freddy Krueger jumper.

Yoo Yeonjung – Secret Love

Boring fuzzy jumper ballads aren’t just for the boys, sadly.

CAMO – MAPSI

This person isn’t Jvcki Wai and it’s painfully obvious.

Film Sound, OYEON – Dawn

Because it’s caonima new year, the songs have slowed down a bit this week and you get nugu shit like this in roundup. It’s not very good but hey neither is much else this week so it’s in good company.

HOONIYONGI – Just You

Imagine being nostalgic for a time when video players sucked and had tracking problems. It really wasn’t better back then.

Ellui – I Swear

Swanning around in overgrown fields of whatever is never really a good sign. A weird rule with these videos is that the shorter the grass, the better the song.

Kim Seungmin feat. BE’O – Deep Sea

I had hopes given that BE’O was on my favourites list for 2022 but the song definitely doesn’t live up to that.

Sumin feat. Woo – Best Friend

This actually could have been alright if the beat had a bit more punch to it. It feels like it was meant to be a hard disco track but just never gets there.

DJ Wegun feat. Punchnello – Ground Zero

Not many songs worth giving a shit about this week, so it’s time for your weekly lesson on black music, because that’s what all the k-pop fans apparently can’t get enough of and yes I will keep doing this for as long as it takes. Despite their crappy politics and their equally sketchy production values (because no self-respecting producer would actually work with such a bunch of fuckwits), English neo-Nazi punk band Skrewdriver actually had some good songs from time to time, they were just impossible to enjoy. So it was a very good thing when American punk band Negro Terror emerged and started doing covers of some of that stuff. Their version of “Voice Of Britain” is so much better than the original that it’s just ridiculous, but the most amusing thing about the song is that they didn’t even need to do much to try to make it better except know how to play their instruments and not be racists, two things a lot of k-pop fans tend to struggle with.

UNEDUCATED KID feat. Yumdda – Brainless

Accurate song title of the week.

Toigo, GONEISBACK, NSW Yoon, Roh Yunha, XINSAYNE – Hop On The Truck

Painful Autotune warbling, nobody wants to hear it, just stop wasting your ace card and let her actually rap.

Jimmy The Awesome – Mach 5

I’m not sure what he’s talking about, cars go significantly slower than mach 5, but then understanding science was never a strong point of Autotuned rapper morons.

Kangxiho feat. Rei, Lil Kintexx – Vicious Circle

Great visual design wasted on completely trash music, just putting it here because I like the noir video style.

Suyoon – Fluttering Mind

People would like “independent music” from Korea a hell of a lot more if it didn’t mostly sound like independent restaurant music.

Namewee ft. DJ Soda – I Love You Tu

Sadly not anywhere near on the level of Namewee’s “I Shot You“, the song is nothing special and DJ Soda doesn’t really have much to do here except dance awkwardly in a genre she’s not used to and hold the microphone the wrong way.

Blasterjaxx x Hard Lights x DJ SODA – Alice In Wonderland

The other song DJ Soda is in this week is actually a lot more her style and really could have used her visuals but instead we get some CGI monstrosity that makes Eternity look like… Eternity. Oh well.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

The Score eSports – How a Burnt Out K-Pop Star Became the Voice of Valorant

A nice little piece on Shannon Williams that doesn’t shy away from describing her true feelings about her music career or calling garden-variety k-pop fans out as the fucking losers that they are (not my lovely readers of course, you’re all special, uwu). Of course this mini-doco mainly talks about how she got into game streaming and that’s fine because that’s what she cares about more now so good for her. Recommended.

GWSN MIYA – Wonderboy, the Aerialist – fancam

GWSN have shat the bed so someone told me to check out Miya before the world forgets she exists and she’s pretty cool, she’s got a bit of a Chrissie Hynde thing going on, if she were a k-pop back in the post-punk days. Not a look you see in k-pop very often, or ever really, plus she now has a criminal record apparently too, which obviously ups her appeal hugely with the Australian cunt demographic i.e me. Time to stan her in the two seconds we have left before k-pop websites stop writing about her.

Super Junior – Bonamana

After the success of “Sorry Sorry” there were a few years where SM just tried to relentlessly milk the shit out of the same formula, and I’m not sure how that worked out for them commercially, but the results here were fairly middling at least musically. It’s basically “Sorry Sorry” with all of the robot voice but none of the riffs that made that song actually work. Sorry indeed.

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That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!